Te Deum – John Featherstone

Te Deum classical-jazz-gospel : crossing musical barriers

‘A diversity which explodes in every domain… musical, devotional, atmospheric, temporal… a reconciliation of styles, traditions, history and modernity.’ Regards Protestants

An innovative setting of this beautiful ancient prayer which moves us with its force and its humanity. With its seamlessly connected musical diversity, the composition reconciles a respect for our musical roots with a desire to build creatively on that heritage, engaging a public with different backgrounds, tastes and traditions in a unique reconciliatory dialogue between different musical worlds..

Orchestrated for three constrasting vocal ensembles (singing in Latin, English and French), piano, percussion, double bass and sax.

The recording

Recorded at Real World Studios, distributed by Bayard Musique and Pias, the album brought together Bath Camerata, BBC prizewinning British choir, directed by Benjamin Goodson, surrounded byEnglish and French jazz and gospel singers, who worked withSwingles’, ‘Get Gospel’ ou Kingdom Choir . Accompanied by 4 instrumentalists on piano, percussion, double bass and sax/clarinette, including regulars at Ronnie Scott’s

In concert

The work was first performed by Bath Camerata at Sevenoaks Festival, GB, and at the Temple du Saint Esprit in Paris. Further performances were done in collaboration with le choeur de Grenelle at the Temple de l’Etoile in Paris at the Theatre of Fontenay-le-Fleury ant in the Stadcasino in Bâle, Switzerland, with l’Ensemble Lux Aeterna in Strasbourg and in Mulhouse, et with Cambridge Chorale in St Paul’s church, Cambridge.

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